The prior art has disclosed a number and variety of interactive electronic calendaring systems and method. The objective of all of these systems is primarily to assist the person who, for a number of different reasons, maintains a calendar of future events containing various information about the event at entry points on the calendar which relate to the time of the event.
The increase of personal computers and intelligent workstations in recent years has made it possible for calendar owners to establish and maintain their calendars on these interactive type data processing systems.
Two general types of interactive electronic calendaring systems have thus evolved in the art. In one type of calendaring system, the owner of the calendar is generally also the user of the workstation and that workstation is generally not a part of a larger network. Generally, in these types of systems, the calendar functions involve presenting a screen to the user representing a day calendar divided into a number of time periods or time slots. Each period is capable of displaying a limited amount of text that the user enters. In some systems, the day calendar can scroll vertically to present more time periods to the user or horizontally to present longer text entries. The operator can generally "page" forward or backward and, in most arrangements, can display a requested date. These calendaring arrangements generally do not limit the type of event that is calendared nor the terminology employed at any of the entry points and, to that extent, function in the same manner as conventional manual calendars or appointment books. The electronic calendaring method and systems do have an advantage over the prior art manual calendaring of events in that the user generally has the ability to scan a time span involving a large number of days and identify calendared events quite rapidly.
The other type of calendaring arrangement that has developed in the prior art involves multi-user environments having a large number of terminals or workstations which are generally part of a larger communication network that has been established to permit the users to interact with each other and with data maintained on the data processing system. In this environment, a user at a terminal or workstation can send a message to one or more of the other users on the network and is notified when the addresses has received and read the message.
In most of these environments, each user generally maintains a calendar, and in many of these environments the reason for the interaction with each other quite often generally involves reference to respective calendars. A considerable amount of time is therefore spent in many organizations, with people checking and rearranging their calendars to accommodate various events such as meetings, presentations, etc. In this environment, the calendar systems and method have progressed to the point where a person who is calling a meeting can at least review within the constraints that the security system dictates, the calendars of other users on the system that he intends to invite to a meeting, to determine whether a given time period is available on the respective calendars of the perspective attendees. However, once the meeting time is set and the prospective participants notified of the date, time, and subject of the meeting, each participant must update his own electronic calendar and reply to the meeting request. While the system can facilitate the request and reply message process, it is sometimes less frustrating when a negative reply has to be transmitted to merely use the telephone to arrive at another mutually convenient time. As a result, a considerable amount of time and effort is spent by calendar owners replying to requests for participation in events that are being calendared by other persons.
The cross referenced applications describe various improvements to electronic calendaring methods for increasing productivity and making the overall system more appealing to the calendar owner by providing functions that the calendar owner came to expect and rely on when his calendar was being kept manually.
In many situations it is desirable that the individual calendar owner have the ability to designate an alternate to attend a meeting in place of the designated invitee. This need arises for a number of different reasons other than the obvious one where the initial invitee cannot attend because of prior commitments. In many situations, the meeting originator may now know the name of the specific individual that should attend the meeting and therefore addresses the meeting notice/invitation to the manager of the department or function that should be represented.
In other situations the department manager wants to make the assignment on a meeting by meeting basis so has arranged to receive all notices for requests for participation by members of his function in events being calendared. He then must do his own manual type of scheduling and notify the meeting originator that while he will not attend this meeting an alternate will attend but that he still wants to be invited to the next meeting or that the assignment is permanent but he still wants to receive a copy of the notice. Such sub rosa arrangements between calendar owners eventually tend to destroy the usefulness of the system and severely weaken the integrity of its information.
The present invention overcomes the described problems and limitations of prior art electronic calendaring methods by providing a method in which a calendar owner can assign an alternate to any meeting to which he has been invited without in any way affecting his ability to receive notices of similar meetings in the future.